What might be the greatest dance party in North America happens every day at 11,000 feet above sea level. Perched up in the clouds, accessible only by skiing or snowboarding, Cloud Nine Alpine Bistro occupies an unassuming former ski patrol shack on Highlands Mountain in Aspen, Colorado.

“Why am I topless and soaked in champagne right now?” mused a strapping young snowboarder on a recent Friday afternoon, as he took a moment to review the scene. Surrounded by men and women of all ages in ski gear and in alternate states of undress, the crowd of 130, who had skied in for lunch at 2:00 p.m., were now dancing on their chairs in ski boots (a treacherous and slippery task), spraying champagne, gyrating, and screaming Icona Pop’s “I don’t care—I love it!” at the top of their lungs.

Smoke from the bubbling cheese in the raclette griddles on each table filled the air and cast a haze through the room. The scent of grilling garlic and sizzling potatoes wafted toward the rafters—now dripping with Veuve Clicquot. Reliable hits drawn heavily from the ’90s pumped on the high-octane sound system. Rosy-cheeked revelers bopped and fist pumped with glee.

At 3:45 p.m., one of the servers, who’s also the resident DJ, got on the mic to announce the last song and to remind the hedonist lunchgoers to get down the mountain safely. The crowd poured back out into the sunlight, clicked into their equipment, and glided down the intermediate terrain to the base of the mountain, hooting and hollering all the way.

The first thing anyone asks when visiting Aspen these days seems to be, “Did you get your Cloud Nine reservation?” The heightened jockeying for a coveted table at one of the restaurant’s twice-daily seatings (at noon and 2:00 p.m.) has reached a fever pitch. Recent boldface visits include Lance Armstrong, Will Ferrell, Chelsea Handler (she’s a big fan) and musician Seal, who belted out his “Kiss From a Rose” with a room full of fellow skiers. After spending a not-insignificant amount of time there this season, it’s easy to understand the popularity. The high-end bistro with a European-style après-ski vibe has a long and storied history of bringing the party.

Aspen is a charming old mining town first established in the 1880s during the Colorado silver rush. Reinvigorated in the postwar era by the investment of industrialist Walter Paepcke, Aspen Skiing Company, aka Ski Co., was founded in 1946, along with the world-renowned intellectual and cultural institutions: the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Music Festival and School. By 1950, Aspen was playing host to North America’s first international ski competition, the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, as well as luring other young WWII veterans to the idealistic mountain hamlet, not the least of which, my own grandparents.

Fast-forward eight years to 1958 when a little all-American competition entered the valley. Whip Jones began developing Aspen Highlands, a separate ski area adjacent to town. “Highlands was always my favorite mountain,” reminisced Cloud Nine’s current general manager, Tommy Tollesson. “It had a gritty little chair; it was a down-and-dirty locals kind of thing.”

For the next three decades as Aspen grew its reputation first as a counterculture party town, then as a celebrity playground, Highlands and the Aspen Skiing Company waged a battle for customers. The competition culminated in an antitrust dispute over lift-ticket packaging that wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1985 Whip Jones of Highlands was awarded $10 million in damages.

As the underdog mountain, Highlands was arguably the more ingenious at creating attractions for visitors. For the past generation or two, the mountain has been presided over by its director of ski patrol, Mac Smith. That picture of a skier jumping the Cloud Nine building with a toboggan? That’s Smith. From 1973 to 1993 the ski patrol put on 80 “shows” a season, ski jumping over Cloud Nine in front of hundreds of spectators.

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One b/w photograph of a group of skiers having a picnic lunch at Highlands, probably at the Cloud Nine Restauarant. 1975-

Photo: Robert Brandes / Aspen Historical Society

The building itself was half patrol shed, half warming hut/picnic spot. “Every lodge would sell a wine-and-cheese picnic as a part of their ‘Highlands day’ package. It had a reputation of people celebrating up there . . . Even at that time, we would occasionally have to help people down the mountain at the end of the afternoon,” said Smith.

“Partying in the 1970s compared to partying in 2016? It was just as rich then as it is now,” Smith recounted, as a sly smile formed under his bushy gray mustache. As a young patrolman, his favorite time of year was spring break, especially when the LSU Tigerettes came to town. “Pretty girls having fun on a nice sunny day, that hasn’t changed.” Listening to Smith, an image of Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused flashed across my mind.

By 1993, Highlands was finally incorporated into the Aspen Skiing Company, and, in 1998, the ski patrol vacated the Cloud Nine building to be closer to the expanding expert terrain on Highland Bowl. What happened next was pure serendipitous magic. Enter Austrian-born Andreas Fischbacher, an executive chef for the Ski Co., who took over operation of Cloud Nine in 1999. Remembering the Alpine bistros of his childhood in the Vienna woods, Fischbacher transformed the warming hut to a full-service European-style bistro with a three-course lunch, fine wine, white linen, and some makeshift speakers. Every ounce of food, every drop of water had to be transported up daily on a snowmobile. The logistics were staggering.

The result? A place at 11,000 feet where one can sit down to a cozy meal with friends, surrounded by pristine national forest, with one of the most spectacular mountain views in North America. “At the end of the first year, the spark was flying. The word was out. Holy macaroni, the place got popular,” Fischbacher reminisced in his thick Austrian accent.

Expansion was unavoidable to meet the demand—it was a constant logistical conundrum. “The kitchen was so undersized, we had to figure out what to do. So we said, let’s make raclette and fondue. Let the people cook themselves, so the kitchen can keep up.” The only problem was that raclette griddles require quite a bit of electricity to heat the cheese and grill the potatoes (over which the cheese is oozing-ly, deliciously poured). “We blew circuits all the time. Ski Co. Engineering hated us,” Fischbacher remembered with a naughty twinkle in his eye.

And so, the legacy of the spring-breaking Tigerettes lived on. After some fresh soup and schnitzel, some wine and a little schnapps, parties would spontaneously erupt. “The conservatives would see the rowdy groups and want to join in, and all of a sudden, everyone is dancing. At some point, people started coming up just for the party.”

Something about the DIY spirit in the old patrol shack resonated with visitors. “When iPods came out, people would come up with their own music. We had a raggedy old stereo and people would fight to have control of it for 10 minutes each. Everybody had a piece of it. Everybody had something to do with the success of the party. It was not sterile. It was really a live organism with everybody involved.”

The early clientele was and is fiercely loyal and kept growing the party to friends and friends of friends. “Once we started taking reservations, sometimes you would come in and have 100 phone messages.”

One early group, “very wealthy, very spirited,” started spraying champagne during their private parties, and this particular expression of joy just caught on. “It was not something we encouraged; not everyone necessarily wants to be doused in champagne.”

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The view from Aspen Cloud Nine, January 2016

Photo: Courtesy of @powderandbubbles

Eventually, the Ski Co. took notice of the wild success Fischbacher had created for them. “Andreas is such a character,” remarked Lynda Edwards, managing director of food and beverage for the Ski Co. “His personality and his following made that place successful. So when he left to start his own restaurant, we used his mark as a place to grow from. We needed a character to follow him. Andreas actually suggested Tommy.”

Cloud Nine is now in its third year under the direction of longtime Aspenite restaurateur Tollesson. “Being Swedish, the first thing I did was put in a real sound system,” remarked Tollesson. This season revealed a $1.2 million renovation. Keeping the same footprint, the once separated dining rooms have been joined and enhanced, and new restrooms were installed. The spirit of the space is in tact, just a little cleaner.

As a business model, Cloud Nine must be one for the B-school books. Starting with a simple prix fixe menu of soup, salad, a fromage for the table, or your choice of entrée. (The pan-seared salmon on a bed of baby kale and lentils is particularly nice.) There are 130 seats inside, and if the sun is shining, the wraparound deck seats an additional 120. Don’t worry, the sound system extends outside, as does a fire pit, space heaters, and a Veuve Clicquot ice bar.

The staff is loyal, well trained, and, in many cases, has developed relationships over time with their repeat customers—many of the customers are repeats. These sophisticated groups from New York, L.A., Latin America, and Europe book their reservations well in advance of touching down at Aspen’s airport. Some don’t just come year after year, but day after day. Last year one gentleman from Mexico City booked his 2 o’clock table for each day of his three-week holiday.

It’s thanks to Tollesson that champagne has become the drink of choice for a Cloud Nine lunch. “I had an ex-girlfriend who always drank champagne up there, and it made sense to me. It’s light and crisp. It’s lunch. It’s celebratory. I’ve never heard of anyone who drank alcohol and didn’t like champagne. So I contacted Veuve Clicquot, and we made it the obvious choice.”

The wait staff keeps track of how many bottles are sprayed at the ceiling during each service with a clicker counter. Rumor has it, the record for spraying so far is 140 bottles—at $125 a pop—it’s a wealth ejaculation on a ridiculous scale. “We’re the number one account of Veuve Clicquot in the country. For a restaurant that’s only open four months a year, that’s a pretty substantial statistic,” revealed Tollesson.

While the spraying can be a nuisance (hide your goggles, hide your cell phone), it has helped jettison the tiny bistro to the top-earning Ski Co. restaurant of all their restaurants combined. “We do very well there,” responded Edwards, when asked about the financials. So, you have a destination restaurant, with a passionate and loyal following, a surplus of demand, and a consistent mode of behavior that inspires clientele to literally throw money at the roof.

The restaurant has even begun to inspire new recruits to the sport. I was recently at lunch with a woman who had flown to Aspen, purchased all the requisite equipment and attire, hired a ski instructor for two days to teach her to ski, all to come to Cloud Nine. At the end of lunch, it took her an hour and 10 minutes to ski to the bottom. She loved it. The best (most expensive) lunch, ever!

Is a C9 coming to a town near you? Tollesson recounted the experience of a young man from Singapore who recently visited for his first time. “Can we make a Cloud Nine in Singapore?” he asked. “No,” Tollesson responded, “We cannot move the mountain to Singapore; Cloud Nine cannot be franchised.” The young man woke up the next day in despair that he had no way to capture and relive his experience. So he bought a house in Aspen. Problem solved.